North Dakota shoots up the list of top energy-producing states thanks to sound regulatory, legislative framework – will Pennsylvania follow its lead in the Marcellus? Quick: What’s the first thing that comes to mind when the subject of North Dakota comes up? Well, assuming it ever does, there’s that famous Coen brothers film of the […]

Director of DEP’s bureau of oil and gas management addresses town hall audience in Northeast PA CANONSBURG, Pa. – Producers of natural gas in Pennsylvania’s portion of the Marcellus Shale “have been building their wells to exceed our current regulatory standards,” the head of DEP’s bureau of oil and gas management told a Luzerne County […]

Marcellus Shale will bring 212,000 jobs. “By 2020, the Marcellus Shale natural gas industry will have created or supported 212,000 Pennsylvania jobs, according to a Penn State projection released Tuesday and paid for by the industry. “The Economic Impacts of the Pennsylvania Marcellus Shale Natural Gas Play: An Update,” revises some of the projections made […]

The safe and steady development of clean-burning natural gas in Pennsylvania’s portion of the Marcellus Shale has the potential to create an additional 212,000 new jobs over the next 10 years on top of the thousands already being generated all across the Commonwealth.

MarcellusCoalition.org will serve as interactive, one-stop shop for news, views and education on the Marcellus Shale Canonsburg, Pa. – The new online home of the Marcellus Shale Coalition (MSC) officially went live earlier today, with the organization of more than 90 members — representing the vast majority of shale gas producers throughout the Appalachian region […]

Financial Times
Everybody’s favourite moment in The Graduate is when the film’s hero is cornered by one of his parents’ friends. The older man’s advice to Benjamin Braddock consists of just one word – “plastics”. Something similar keeps happening to me at international conferences. I will be minding my own business, when a delegate will get up with a gleam in his eye and announce portentously – “shale gas!”

Fully developed, the Marcellus Shale has the potential to be the second largest natural gas field in the world, behind only the South Pars/Asalouyeh field shared between the nations of Iran and Qatar. Converted to British Thermal Units (BTUs), the natural gas found in the Marcellus could be equivalent to the energy content of 87 billion barrels of oil, enough to meet the demand of the entire world for nearly three years.

As efforts continue to responsibly convert the promise and opportunity of the Marcellus Shale into jobs, revenue and opportunity for Pennsylvania, it’s sometimes easy to forget that this campaign is still very much in its infancy. Indeed, as recently as 2006, fewer than 150 Marcellus wells were in operation statewide — representing only a fraction of the more than 50,000 conventional natural gas wells found in the Commonwealth.

Imagine coming to the end of a long race only to find the rules dictate that, in order to win, you have to run an extra mile past the finish line, and then turn around and run an additional mile back. You’d probably consider it an inconvenience, for starters — and a waste of time, energy and resources as well.